Read A Garden of Earthly Delights for Free Online

the rings of dirt around his neck.
    Actually he missed the fields. You got into a rhythm, a way of moving. Mind gone dead. Peppers, cucumbers, squash. Snatch 'em off the vine, place 'em in the basket. Not fussing with getting under the leaves like fucking bush beans, pole beans, wax beans. Fuck onions that were worse, the stems breaking off in your hand if you got impatient.
    “Sit still. Sit up. Mind your milk.” Pearl spoke with deceptive quiet to Clara. “Hear me, Clara:
Mind your milk.
”
    For sure, Clara was going to overturn her milk glass. It was a matter of waiting.
    Carleton eyed Pearl warning
Don't you touch my daughter, I'll break your ass.
Trouble was, Pearl didn't catch these signals like she'd used to. Pearl ground her jaws, and picked at the scabs on her face and neck, hummed to herself and even rocked back and forth like some kind of mental case, in such a state she wasn't fearful of Carleton, Christ he was fearful of
her.
    Five children now, and one of them a seven-month baby. What you call an infant. Nursing, and fretting and crying half through the night. Driving their neighbors crazy, and Carleton couldn't blame them for banging the walls. With each baby Pearl was getting stranger, sometimes Carleton swore her eyes hadn't any pupils, all iris, like a cat's. All she seemed to like were the new babies, but onlywhen she nursed them. Humming and rocking and stroking the baby's soft thin-haired head in a way that repelled Carleton, like something sick and disgusting he couldn't give a name to.
    How Pearl got pregnant, damned if he knew. She'd keep him off her with both feet, the soles of her hot little feet, if she caught him in time.
    Pale blond hair stiff with grease, and the back of her head balding in patches from the damn ringworm. Still, if she fixed herself up she looked pretty, or almost. In the fields, on the bus (they traveled now by bus, and it wasn't bad), people looked at Pearl in a certain way that drove Carleton wild.
Don't you feel sorry for me you assholes.
Carleton had his women friends to console him, also he consoled himself, a woman gets a little crazy every time she has a baby and Pearl has had five babies so maybe she will grow out of it.
    There's a philosophy that says: No point in preparing for trouble because unexpected things will happen instead.
    There's a philosophy credited to Charles Lindbergh that says: No point in preparing for disaster (like a crashed plane) because another kind of disaster (your baby kidnapped) will happen instead.
    Carleton lifted his cider jug, and drank.
    Sometimes, Pearl was extra-vigilant watching the kids at the table, almost hoping (you could see!) for one of them to knock a glass over, or drop their food from their mouths. Other times, and these were maybe worse times, Pearl was dreamy and not-hearing in their midst. The kids could kick one another under the table and Pearl didn't give a damn so it was left to Carleton, and he had a temper.
    “Next month, we're going to Jersey by ourselves.” Carleton was picking his teeth. Making his announcement to Sharleen and Clara, now that Mike had run outside and Pearl was staring at something on the floor. (What? A rat? No rat. Nothing.) Carleton spoke carefully, quietly. It was his Daddy voice. It was not a voice you contested. At night when he was done for the day and he was free of them, spending an hour or two in a tavern or with a woman, his voice was normal as anybody's: he liked to joke, and he liked to laugh. It was a hard youngish harsh voice that nonetheless likedto laugh. But here in the cabin, so hot sweat ran in rivulets down his naked sides, he never spoke in that voice.
    “Up there there's no spic bastards. ‘Wetbacks.' ”
    Clara was reaching for her milk glass. Carleton caught it just in time.
    “Dad-dy? Where is ‘Jer-sey'?” “Up north. Way north. Where there's snow.” “Hell, we ain't gonna see no
snow.
” Sharleen made her lips swell outward in a way Carleton hated, reminded